Will the real Hull City please stand up? Fourteen games in and it remains a mystery where this Championship season is headed under Leonid Slutsky.

No sooner had City earned seven points from a possible nine, their most productive run since relegation from the Premier League in May, along came a result – and performance – to puncture all optimism.

Saturday’s 3-2 defeat at home to Nottingham Forest has left the Tigers in 16th position and collectively scratching heads ahead of hosting Middlesbrough tonight.

City have seldom looked like they were on a journey that will end with promotion in May but within the dressing room there are long-term hopes among the short-term frustrations.

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“I do feel we are getting there as a team, 100 per cent,” said captain Michael Dawson.

“We had a new squad in the summer and it does take time to settle down. People moving isn’t always easy. Look at Ola (Aina). This was probably the first time he had left London.

“It can be hard. I knew Hull and the surrounding area when I moved up but others have to learn all about it, while trying to find a house and so on.

“We are trying to put together a whole new group of players and that it is not always easy. Jarrod (Bowen), Max (Clark) and Stephen (Kingsley), all young players that are playing week in and week out in an intense environment.

“They have to perform and if they don’t, they have to explain why we are not winning.”

Michael Dawson of Hull City (Image: Focus)

For all the sporadic promise shown in the wins over Burton, Bolton and Birmingham, City are still closer to the bottom three than the top six after almost a third of the season.

A summer of turmoil has not helped Slutsky’s bid to launch a promotion challenge.

As well as seeing eight players sold to raise a potential £50m in the wake of relegation, 11 new players arrived to make City unrecognisable to the side that was relegated by a 4-0 loss at Crystal Palace in May.

Dawson and Kamil Grosicki were the only two starters at Selhurst Park to have faced Nottingham Forest.

“I hadn’t personally experienced a summer with so much change as we had last summer,” he said. “It was strange to lose as many as we had.

“It started in the summer with Curtis (Davies) and then we came back to lose Robbo (Andy Robertston), Harry (Maguire), Tom (Huddlestone) and a few others. Big players and big characters, the core of the team that kept the dressing room together.